Isaac Lea was an American publisher, conchologist and geologist. He was a partner in the publishing businesses Matthew Carey & Sons; Carey, Lea & Carey; Carey, Lea & Blanchard; and Lea & Blanchard.

Mathew Carey was an Irish-born American publisher and economist who lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Dublin, he had engaged in the cause of parliamentary reform, and in America, attracting the wrath of Federalists, retained his democratic sympathies. However, he broke with the emerging Democratic Party and its southern constituency by offering a defense of economic protectionism. He was the father of economist Henry Charles Carey.